A Bit of Both
by nottonyharrison
Summary: "Is this really just a social call, or do you want something?" She digs through her bag for a few moments, trying to make herself look busy and and stop her hands from shaking. Eventually she clasps her fingers around a packet of Mentos. She pops one in her mouth and turns around, offering the roll to Rio. "A bit of both."
1. Beth

She's thought about it more than once. Invasive, filthy thoughts that leave her flushed and uncomfortable in places she's tried to forget about.

The first time was when he called her _bitch_ in her bedroom during Kenny's party. She hated herself after that, angry that she had allowed her mind to enter the gutter when his words were so blatantly filled with misogyny. The second time was in the shower that night when she just thought _fuck it_ and rubbed one out while she sat up against the uncomfortably hard tile. It wasn't satisfying, but it was her first orgasm in over a year; at least she was reminded what it felt like.

It's started happening every time they meet. She didn't even need to think of a lie during the sit-down with Agent Turner. The fantasy had played out in vivid detail as her mind danced on the edge of sleep the morning before. Later, the moment Rio had smiled and tilted his head back against the headrest in the minivan, she had to stamp down the flash of heat she could feel creeping up her neck.

When she tried to sell him the Botox though. That was it. His eyes had been soft and warm, and he'd told her she didn't need it. That was when she knew he wanted to fuck her.

So somehow she isn't surprised when she comes home from dropping the kids off the next morning, and he's sitting on the porch. Well… she is surprised he's sitting on the porch rather than making himself comfortable in her living room, but she doesn't raise a brow at his presence.

He stands and holds his hands in front of him, in the oddly formal pose he seems to favor. "May I come in?"

The keys are dangling from her fingers and she pauses before stepping around him. "There a reason you're asking instead of just doing?" She unlocks the door and steps inside. He stays on the porch, even after she gestures for him to step through the door.

"I figure since you ain't working with me at this point in time, I should ask. You know… proper like."

She purses her lips for a moment. "If we're not working together any more, why are you here?"

He unclasps his hands and spreads his arms in a gesture of exasperation. "Shit, Elizabeth. I dunno I just wanted to make a social call. Make sure you didn't get rid of all that crap by jabbin' it into your face."

"Well, as you can see by my raised eyebrows and genuine surprise, I still have full control over my facial muscles."

He smiles and ducks his head. She opens the door wider and jerks her head in a gesture of grudging welcome.

He stands in the entryway with an odd combination of awkwardness and entitlement. She steps around him towards the kitchen and feels his eyes on her all the way to the counter, where she drops her bag and begins shrugging off her coat. She feels his hands before she sees them, sliding down her arms along with the sleeves of the tan wool. She doesn't turn around but she hears him fold the coat and place it on one of the stools.

"Is this really just a social call, or do you want something?" She digs through her bag for a few moments, trying to make herself look busy and and stop her hands from shaking. Eventually she clasps her fingers around a packet of Mentos. She pops one in her mouth and turns around, offering the roll to Rio.

"A bit of both." He takes a mint and rolls it around in his mouth for a few moments before biting down. Beth reaches behind her and puts the packet down on the bench.

"So what white collar crime am I getting involved in now? Art forgery? Ponzi schemes? Maybe a bit of Insider Trading?" Her body is tense. He's close enough that she can see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. She would be lying to herself if she didn't briefly wonder if this was the end, that he was lulling her into a false sense of security before splattering her brains all over the marble backsplash. He doesn't pull out a gun though, instead it's a brown paper bag rolled over itself a few times. Maybe an inch and a half thick.

"Your cut of the last take" He holds it in front of him, only a few millimeters away from her chest. She snatches it from him and shoves it in the drawer next to her. Cutlery clatters as she slams it closed.

"What made you have a change of heart?" Her eyes are fixed on his, and he takes a small step. He's close enough now that she can feel his breath against her cheek.

"What makes you think I wasn't gonna give it to you?"

"That was pretty heavily implied."

He bites his lip and she feels her stomach drop. All at once she feels hot and prickly, squirming against the counter. He presses up against her and leans in until his moth is brushing up against her left ear. She momentarily hopes the neighbors aren't peering out their kitchen window, but the thought disappears almost as fast as it comes.

"You know what else was pretty heavily implied?" he says.

"What?"

"What you want me to do to you on that dining table."

Her stomach drops and she whimpers. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"What, you don't think I've got Turner's office bugged?"

She bristles. "Nice of you to tell me."

"Such a shame we never saw each other again though… sounds like we had some chemistry.'

She doesn't bother to reply, instead she turns her head to the side and slides her hand up his neck and into his closely cropped hair. When their lips touch it's only for a moment and he's pulling her head back, hands pressing hard against her scalp, almost painfully twisting until she gasps.

"Do you want this?" His eyes are closed, and he presses his forehead against hers.

Her breath comes out a little shaky and she pushes him away. His eyes spring open, and there's a flash of sadness before he lets go of her hair and drops his hands to his sides.

"Not on the table."

He looks confused, and she stares at him for a long time before brushing past him and grabbing his hand.

…

Beth watches him afterwards. He fell asleep before her, barely awake when she returned from the bathroom. She looks again at the fine creases around his eyes and realizes for the first time that he's older than he looks. He's also smaller than she first thought, now that the the staunch layers of bravado and intimidation have been stripped back. Not that he's short, of course not. It's more the wiry frame and lean, refined muscles that look bulkier behind the hoodies and button ups.

She'd slowly removed his shirt as they'd walked down the hallway toward her bedroom. She was surprised he had let her push him backwards, taking the lead and unbuttoning roughly as she crowded into his personal space. They didn't kiss again until they were in the room, her back against the door as he pushed it shut and she had dropped his shirt down at their feet. His mouth was hot and slick, and he knew how to use it without relying on sticking his tongue in her mouth. Bites and nips and longer, wetter kisses that made her brain rattle and her stomach flip.

They hadn't fucked against the wall, but he had gone down on her right then and there. Her jeans had been a challenge and he had pulled her boots off for her while she shimmied the denim down over her hips. Neither of them bothered to do anything about the top half of her clothing, and she had been so distracted by his mouth and his fingers that she hadn't noticed the lack of tattoos until they were both naked on the bed.

She rolled onto her back and remembered the moment she had run her finger over his neck and he had swallowed, adam's apple bobbing as her finger had run over the body of the eagle. "You just have this one to look intimidating, or is it a fashion statement?" she had asked.

"What, you think only white people make stupid decisions when they're seventeen?" He had smiled and then kissed her, and she had felt his grin against her mouth right up to the point he tugged on her lips with his teeth, and from then on she hadn't bothered to think too hard about anything.

…

He only sleeps for fifteen minutes before his eyes flutter open and he catches her looking.

He stares back at her for about twenty seconds. His hand trails down her side until it rests on her hip and his fingers dig into the soft skin.

"When was the last time someone told you you're beautiful?" he asks, his voice husky with sleep.

"Does someone telling me I don't need Botox count?"

He grins and huffs out a short laugh, but she knows he understands. She has a moment of sadness before he presses his forehead against hers. "You're so beautiful I can't think about anything 'cept this every time you're anywhere near me."

Then she's on her back and his body is pressed up against hers. He's hard again, and he bites on her earlobe, pulling down as she presses against the leg he has between hers.

"'Cept it's not just that you're beautiful though right?" his breath is hot and she can feel the friction of his leg hairs against her thighs as he moves. She shivers and turns her head. Her lips catch his and he gasps against her mouth.

She can feel the moment when the carefully measured control is gone, and he's running purely on instinct. His body almost curls around hers, and the vulnerability is coming off him in waves.

He's half way back down her body, lips gently brushing the underside of her breasts when it hits her. She wraps her fingers around his neck, and tilts his head up until their eyes meet.

'I own you," she says.

His voice is gravel and his eyes are smoke. "Yeah."

 _End._


	2. Rio

He likes to write. When he's alone at night, with no sound but the occasional swish from a car driving past on the quiet street.

He used to write about his experiences as a kid, about being the butt of jokes as the only wealthy Mexican teenager in a mostly poor community. He tried to get a book deal once, but the overwhelming response from publishers was one of scepticism, believing the story was a fantasy concocted in the mind of a lucky dreamer.

He didn't consciously stop writing about his childhood. He tried his hand at a sci-fi epic once, but lost sight of the story after a few chapters. There was the gritty gang drama he had a crack at last year but it cut too close to home and he abandoned it early on. He took a break for a few months, too distracted by the money and corralling his employees to pay much heed to his hobby.

Then he met Elizabeth Boland and everything changed. He lay awake for hours every night turning over in bed, legs tangled in the sheets and feet pushing against the mattress. When he had walked up the path to the neatly presented suburban home, the last thing he expected was to be pointing a gun at a woman who would invade his thoughts constantly.

So he writes. He writes about her strawberry blond hair, and the way she curls it every morning to look soft and motherly. He writes about her anger and hard edges which are hidden by her constant motion, PTA meetings and family dinners and cleaning a McMansion big enough to fit all her accidental kids. He writes about the time he called her _bitch_ during her kid's birthday party, and how immediately beforehand he had wanted to kiss her so badly it had almost hurt.

He writes about her body, and how it looked in the dress she wore that day. He imagined it was a robe just waiting to be removed and spent hours detailing how he would strip her out of it, kiss down her neck, untie the sash, and free her gorgeous tits and that glorious ass.

He wrote about how he would make her feel more than anything her ugly, undeserving husband ever had.

That first day though, while they were waiting for Ruby and Annie. He had watched her make the call, her back partially turned on him so all he could see was her body in profile. Then she had sat stoic for twenty minutes until Ruby had arrived. It had started with an immediate and unexpected desire, and quickly become a grudging respect.

Now it was bordering on obsession. Every snarl and every degrading epithet was in the aim of tamping down the heat coursing down his back when he saw her. _I don't care if you try…_ it wasn't the most effective pep talk in the world but it was the best he could do without losing face.

Then he had told her to tell Agent Turner they had fucked. He had wanted to pull her into the back seat so badly in that moment that he had to break eye contact to remind himself who he was. She was flustered and speechless, he was only staying cool because he'd spent years practicing.

After she tries to sell him the Botox he's had enough. He tells some of his guys he has some personal errands to run the next day, and goes to her house.

He knows he's done for when she gets out of the car and her expression is hard guarded. He's not used to it and it makes him feel guilty that he's the one who bought about the change. He rubs his right thumb against his left hand and takes a calming breath.

"May I come in?"

…

She kissed him. He kind of can't believe that she was the one who did it first, but then she's pushing him away and he's very much aware that she has the upper hand in this situation. He drops his hands and gets ready to turn away, already thinking about what he can say to cover his disappointment when she grabs his hand and drags him towards the stairs.

"Not on the table," she says, and his heart leaps into his throat.

Maybe that's why he _lets_ her push him towards her bedroom. She's unbuttoning his shirt with hard tugs at each point. Each button is punctuated with a shove, and he's relieved when they turn through a doorway and he finally has the chance to take the upper hand by slamming the door closed, trapping her body between him and the fake timber.

He kisses her. Her lips are soft and a little chapped from the cold. He tugs at her lips with his teeth, and she eventually lets him kiss her with an open mouth. She never moves to push her tongue into his though, so he follows her lead and instead buries his hands in her hair and sucks and nips at her lips until she's gasping, and he's dropping to his knees to remove her boots.

She catches on pretty quick, and it's not long before he has two fingers buried in her, and his tongue teasing her clitoris until she comes right there against the door.

…

"I own you." Her eyes are dark with lust, but there's something else there… something like compassion or even undersanding.

He only has a one syllable answer to that. He's know he was a goner since way back when she dropped her grocery bags on the first day they met.

 _End_


End file.
